Infections After Cancer Treatment
Having cancer and undergoing cancer treatment can weaken the immune system. This, in turn, makes the body more vulnerable to pick up infections or develop fever or flu frequently.
There are different reasons why a cancer patient may get infection after series of cancer treatment.
Chemotherapy Induced Infections
Chemotherapy, though a treatment for cancer, has severe effects on the body. Firstly, it affects the production of normal white blood cells in bone marrow.
Usually, white blood cells help in fighting off infection. Post chemotherapy, if the counts of white blood cells are lower, a patient is at an increased risk of infections. Infections may also aggravate more quickly; for instance, a trivial or small infection could become fatal within hours if left untreated.
Doctors generally guide their patients to look for signs of infections after the treatment.
Whilst not all drugs for chemotherapy affect the bone marrow or increase risk of an infection, many of them do. It generally depends on the drug you have been given, dose of drug, age of patient, general health, and stage and type of cancer. Sometimes doctors also give antibiotics during chemotherapy in order to ensure that patients can fight off infection or even stop getting one.
Radiation Therapy Induced Infections Radiation therapy helps in destroying cancer cells from the treated area. In course of treatment, even the normal cells are affected by radiation, especially the fast growing cells like the ones in the hair and skin. However, these normal cells can repair themselves better than the cancer cells.
Radiation also affects the cells inside the bone marrow, which produces blood cells like white blood cells that normally fight off infections. However, radiation only affects that part of the body which is being treated for cancer.
Infection After Surgery Infection could be side effects of surgery. The chance of infection depends on the type of surgery and its extensiveness. Surgeon may recommend antibiotics for reducing the risk of getting an infection post surgery. After the surgery, patients may have some drainage tubes placed inside their body to ensure fluid does not collect around the site of surgery.
Infection from Biological Therapy Biological therapy is basically a treatment with substances made naturally by our body. Immunotherapy is also a biological therapy which uses substances which are involved in fighting an infection. The body produces chemicals known as cytokines when an infection occurs. Cytokines are mainly responsible for the general signs of infection, which includes fever. As treatments, the body is likely to have them in larger quantities than usually produced. This is one of the reasons why flu like symptoms such as fever is common.
Infections from Stem Cell and Bone Marrow Transplant There are some extensive treatments for cancer, which includes stem cell transplant and bone marrow transplant. A patient may be given high dose of chemotherapy along with radiotherapy to kill cancer cells. Higher doses of these drugs can damage the bone marrow.
So, stem cell or bone marrow infusion is needed to replace the lost bone marrow.
During this treatment, the body becomes more susceptible to infections affecting the digestive system and skin.